'It's really hard to leave your kids.'

At Ask a Manager, Alison Green pays tribute to her mother on the second anniversary of her medically-assisted death.

I recommend reading the whole thing because it's about an important issue, but perhaps in a private setting, because it is touching, especially if you have experienced or are experiencing a similar situation.

For now, I leave you with two excerpts, the first of which makes it clear that this was a very good person:

My mom had always lived life on her own terms, so it wasn't surprising to anyone who knew her that she was determined to die on her own terms too. From the time my sister and I were very young, she always taught us that you should think for yourself and choose a life path without concern for what other people thought, as long as you felt your choices were ethical ones.

She also taught us that when something is wrong in the world, you speak up about it...

The second is a clarion call:

When I think about how differently her final months would have gone if she didn't have the right to make her own medical choices, I'm so angry that she could have been forced to suffer. She had terminal cancer; it was always going to end with her dying, no matter what anyone did. Whose interests would have been served by forcing her to linger in pain for a few extra months?

She viewed her ability to minimize her own suffering as a great gift, one that brought her immense comfort, and so it brought us comfort too.

I hate that she is gone, but I love that she got to die exactly the way she lived: saying, "This is not right, and I'm going to work to change it" and making her own decisions right up until the end.

In honor of my mom's memory, I hope you will push your legislators to give terminally ill adults legal access to medical aid in dying, no matter where they live.

Having lost our own father to terminal illness, my brothers and I all support legalizing medical assistance in death, and as I grow older, and wonder if I will succumb to my grandmother's Alzheimer's, I would like to be able to exercise that option myself.

Our lives are our own. It is evil to force anyone to endure great pain or anything else they find intolerable ahead of the end of their lives, and it is a shame that the law does not already universally recognize that aspect of one's right to life.

-- CAV